[Talk] Some thoughts on AUUG, LUG's and their future

[Gary R. Schmidt]

Steve,
While I agree with a lot of what you are saying in relation to the need 
to rejuvenate AUUG, I have a couple of points to make.

You are making a distinct mistake in dismissing the "Old Guard" UNIXen.


>   SunOS/Solaris used to be the leading edge.  AIX, HP-UX etc have only
> ever been
>   vendor niche products.  Is SCO still around even?  SGI/MIPS are
> transforming.

SCO/Caldera is _still_ the biggest selling OS in the vertical 
applications market.  Yes, I understand that if Linux is used it can be 
invisible, but you have to look at what is being sold in the USA to get 
a feel for these figures.  And learn to ignore sections of the media.

The _hardware_ produced by Sun, IBM, et al is (possibly excluding the 
Itanium-based machines) several levels ahead of the PC and Macintosh 
architectures, and so no company who considers their data to be critical 
will move their main systems away from these proprietary solutions until 
there is a suitable replacement.  And yes, there have been court cases 
where customers have sued vendors (and won), in relation to failure to 
deliver on contracted agreements.

Now, we know that Sun have just announced a Sun-badged Linux for the x86 
architecture, and that IBM are spending money on Linux development, but 
this does not mean that there will be a sudden, or even slow, death of 
commercial UNIX Operating Systems.  I have been reading and hearing 
about the "imminent death of UNIX" for about twenty years now, and it is 
still with us.  Just as the mainframe is not dead.

If we want decent hardware produced to run our operating systems on, the 
vendors who are capable of doing so must be convinced that it is worth 
it _to_ _them_ to continue.  In just the last twenty years, many great 
hardware platforms and versatile operating systems have fallen by the 
wayside, not for a lack of technical merit, but a perception in the 
market that "we can just do that on a PC".  Telling the remaining 
machine developers that we can live without them will be throwing the 
baby out with the bath water.

 > - Rebrand AUUG EG: - "Aust Unix/Linux/BSD User Group"
This I really disagree with, it smacks of Stallman's push for 
GNU/ABC/DEF/GHI/IJK/Linux.  If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, 
and walks like a duck, it's a duck.

Extend it, yes, as we did when we became the "Australian UNIX and Open 
Systems User Group", but keep the AUUG name/symbol as it is.

	Cheers,
		Gary	B-)
-- 
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   Gary R. Schmidt          At Play: grschmidt at acm.org
                            Sure I work, I no longer boast about it.
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